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However, the Uruguay Round of global trade talks,

launched in the mid-1980s, was ambitious as the talks sought
the formation in 1995 of the super-body on global trade called
the WTO. The WTO, in turn, covered not only the GATT on

industry and GATT on agriculture (called simply as Agreement
on Agriculture or AoA) but a whole range of economic concerns.

One of these is the General Agreement on Services (GATS),
which was pushed by the infuential lobby groups from Europe
and North America associated with the financial sector. The

whole idea is to put various service industries such as banking,
communications, maritime services and so on under the general

WTO disciplinary principles of progressive liberalization,
non-discrimination among trading partners, transparency and
so on, among others. But how can these WTO principles be

applied in services, which cannot be loaded in boxes and
container vans for shipping across borders?

The GATS proponents came up with four modes on
how global trading of services can be realized, namely:

• Mode 1 – the service provider sends the service

across borders, for example, a financial analyst
in country A sending by mail, fax or internet the

results of his analysis to clients in country B;

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